"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Sunday, June 05, 2016

Have You Ever Peed On Anyone? I Mean On Anyone You Dislike

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Yorba Linda in Orange County isn't that far from where I live in L.A. It takes an hour and 5 minutes down the 5 Freeway passed Downey, Norwalk and Buena Park to the 91 just before Anaheim and then up the 90 for a few minutes. But it's not an area I would ever want to go to and the Nixon Library's never high on my list of must-see attractions. A decade or two ago Roland schlepped me there. I so did not want to go; unlike him, my recollections of Nixon are not academic and historical. I left the country and lived abroad for nearly 7 years after he was elected. I was still feeling the hate. But I agreed to go so I could pee on his grave. I didn't tell Roland that. When we got there I kind of liked the museum but when I saw the grave, there were too many people around for me to whip it out and pee. So I spit instead. Roland freaked out and ran away. He probably would have been angrier if I had pissed on the grave.Am I the only one who wanted to pee on Nixon's grave? Or who spat on it? Maybe. But Skip Kaltenheuser had something even cooler in mind a bit earlier-- peeing on the living war criminal Henry Kissinger. I'm sure that would have caused a fuss. "Henry the K is back," he recently wrote for Ozy. "Not hanging with Jill St. John but holding hands with Hillary. A mentor. My guilt by association resurfaces, decades after I hung out with him."

It’s 1980 and here I am at F. Scott’s, a hip, upper-crust bar in Georgetown with an art deco motif. Looks like Reagan will win the White House. Winds of change are coming, particularly at über-liberal programs such as Action (Peace Corps combined with VISTA), where I’m in the legal office.Some occasion has brought my whole office, still wearing suits, to the bar for drinks. I’m with a girlfriend who makes her bread as a torch singer of Cole Porter and George Gershwin standards. She sings in a private nightclub called the Gaslight Club, where old-hand lobbyist types hang out. Rumors of deals cut during card games. The Gaslight’s Gay ’90s motif was legendary in the heyday of LBJ-- dark rooms worlds from the see-me-now crowd of the brightly lit F. Scott’s.I’m feeling no pain. Drinking rock ’em, sock ’em ice cream drinks, the sweet girlie kind that really sneak up on a man. Now I’m in the john, whistling a merry tune and thinking what a bright boy am I, ready to whiz in one of those marvelous marble stalls that stick out from the wall like angel wings, the urinal packed with ice like a weird snow cone.As I unzip, a man slips into the stall to my right. Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger. Always loathed him. I had a lady pal whose good friend was the widow of a Chilean minister under Allende. The former minister, a foe of Pinochet and an opponent of foreign investment in Chile, was blown up while driving along Washington’s Embassy Row. My friend despises all things Kissinger, who helped usher in Pinochet’s dictatorship.A great conundrum faces me. I have a chance to symbolically avenge the widow, and so many more, and thrill my friend. All I need to do is power-wash Kissinger’s shiny black left wing tip. With any luck, collateral damage to his left ankle. Easy to act very drunk, being very drunk, and make profound apologies about the accident.A sudden wobbling of my knees. I know that, whether or not he believes me, Kissinger can get me good. Even if Reagan wasn’t coming to town. Knows people.But the Peace Prize, what a travesty! Pinochet, murderous jerk. Cambodia. Nixon’s secret plan to end-- prolong!-- the Vietnam War. Bombing as a campaign strategy. Thumbs-up to massacres in East Timor. My thoughts race. How would the office react? Who cares, I can dine out for years on being the guy who was kicked out of F. Scott’s for pissing on Kissinger’s shoe.I hold back. Realpolitik pressure builds like a fire hydrant. I so need to pee. I so want to pee on Kissinger’s shoe. I size up the trajectory, ready my aim …And I stall out. My gaze returns to the ice in my urinal. Then I hear him grunt and zip and he’s finished. With a glance my way and a nod, he steps back. I nod too, but in shame. Does he know how close he came? Does he ever even consider the possibility? Opportunity knocks. I hesitate. Opportunity moves on. I face my moment of truth-- and clutch like a Jayhawk in the Final Four. Pissing on his grave wouldn’t be the same. Anyone can, under cover of darkness.I live haunted by this specter, praying for opportunity’s redemptive knock.Fair warning, Henry. Wear your storm rubbers.

I was thinking... if you don't do something-- get arrested, spit on their grave, pee on their foot, something... are you just as guilty as your country's leaders? I'm trying to get Skip to start writing for DWT. What do you think?

1 Comments:

My daughter's partner is a Chilean Jew . Born here in 1988 and raised in Chile. Where he comes from ( Santiago ) the Jews were big Pinochet supporters ( not his parents though ) I was visiting them last week and he told me if there ever is a Gulag here Kissinger should be the first to go in.